How can I enable the temperature-controlled fans instead of constantly running

[ericzhang]

Hello everyone,

I flashed the armbian into my tf cand and inserted it into my OrangePi 5 Plus, with my fans inserted to the specific socket on board (2pin, 1.25mm, 5V, PWM3_IR_M1). However, when I booted it, the fans was running constantly instead of controlled by temperature dynamically, like the official OS images that did only the fans running when the temperature over 50 celsius.

I wanna know how to configure my OS to enable the temperature-controlled fans like the official images.

 

The offical documents shows:
Linux uses the default pwm-fan drivers to control thye fans and the device tree was defined in orange-pi-5.10-rk3588/arch/arm64/boot/dts/rockchip/rk3588-orangepi-5-plus.dts

 

Here is the code:

fan: pwm-fan {

compatible = "pwm-fan";

#cooling-cells = <2>;

pwms = <&pwm3 0 50000 0>;

cooling-levels = <0 50 100 150 200 255>;

rockchip,temp-trips = <

50000 1

55000 2

60000 3

65000 4

70000 5

>;



status = "okay";

};

 

Here are some descriptions regarding some columns:

pwms = <&pwm3 0 50000 0>：The fans use pwm3.

cooling-levels = <0 50 100 150 200 > 255>：Used to configure the speed levels (duty cycle of PWM). The number and magnitude of the levels can be customized. 6 levels are configured, with the speed range from 0 to 255.

rockchip,temp-trips：Used to configure the correspondence between CPU temperature and fan speed levels. This can be adjusted according to actual needs. In the above configuration, 50°C corresponds to level 1, and 70°C corresponds to level 5.

Thank you very much.

 

Edited September 4 by ericzhang

[royk]

It's enabled by default. I believe that you have the wires swapped. There's a topic here about it where I also added a overlay to adjust what speed at which temperature.

I'm not sure if the overlay is still compatible, but since you've already found the source you can change it accordingly.

Edited September 4 by royk

[The Tall Man]

This doesn't exactly answer your question, but it may meet your need better...

 

I experimented around with different fans & heatsink configurations. Using an official Debian image from Orange PI 5 Plus, I found that the PWM controlled fan changed speed pretty abruptly, and only at high temperatures. Their adjustment algorithm didn't apply any decent smoothing at all. It was very noisy, and the constant changes whenever I did anything made it very distracting.

 

I ended up purchasing a 3rd party fan with two single-pin leads that I could connect to the GPIO's 3.3v (or 5v). And I have it mounted on a Geekworm case (N508 - made for the Orange PI 5 Plus), with a short heatsink over the ICs. That case had actually come with a fan that had a single 2-pin connector, so it was only good for 5v and about 5 months before it died.

 

From the GPIO, the 5v is on all the time the computer is receiving power, but the 3.3v is only on while the computer is on. If you "shut down" the computer, the 3.3v shuts down along with it.

 

When I first tried the new fan on 5v, it wasn't too bad, but I could hear it.

 

If I ran it off the 3.3v (which I do all the time now), it's virtually silent.

 

When I run something that maxes out the CPU for a long time, with this fan on 3.3v running (and the short heatsink in place), the SoC temperatures stabilize around 50 degrees, and I've never seen them exceed the mid-50s with this setup. That is way lower than that official PWM fan did with that pseudo-heatsink it's mounted on, under the same CPU load. And I never have to worry about the fan quitting if some software PWM control malfunctions.

 

Here's that new fan I bought (it came in a pack of 4):

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08R1CXGCJ?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title

 

If you have an N508 or similar type of case, the fan mounts to the top of the case. I checked, and Geekworm is apparently no longer selling that case? But back when I was looking into all this, I had found another very similar case sold by a different company (after I'd already purchased the N508) - I don't remember its name. But the fan it came with came with two single-pin connectors like the fan I eventually ended up staying with.

Edited September 5 by The Tall Man